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villeggiatura. Further study of the industries, religious life, and intellectual
activities of the last two centuries of the Republic would help to create a
more balanced view of the period and its architectural fabric.
Devotion and MemorializationThe impact of the fall of the Republic on ecclesiastical life has already
been mentioned, and its full implications must be carefully borne in mind,
for it was at this point that the understanding of the functions of different
types of churches fell into near oblivion. In the early years of the 19th
century, some churches were transformed into sterilized art-historical
“monuments”: the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, for instance, was
stripped of all its nave altars and post-Quattrocento fittings.114 Others were
converted into factories, munition stores, or prisons.115 Churches designed
for use by mendicant friars, such as the Frari, San Francesco della Vigna,
and the Redentore, became parish churches, while many altarpieces were
either removed or transferred to other locations. The efforts of medieval
Venice to fashion itself as a Holy City—the first stage on the pilgrimage to
Jerusalem—were forgotten, as relics and precious liturgical objects were
moved or lost.116
At the same time, St Mark’s became the cathedral of Venice in 1806,
a function formerly held by the church of San Pietro di Castello on the
eastern margins of the city. Originally both a palatine chapel and a shrine
for the evangelist’s body, the building of St Mark’s had been modeled on
the Justinian church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople (destroyed
in 1457). As Martino da Canal remarked in the later 13th century, “hav-
ing built such a beautiful church, the Venetians decided that it should be
embellished every year for ever and ever, and this is what they do.”117 Thus
the church, though deeply rooted in Byzantine tradition, was continually
modified by later accretions and alterations that continued throughout the
lifetime of the Republic. In the 16th century, a major modification to the
interior was implemented by the proto Jacopo Sansovino at the request of
114 Deborah Howard, “The Church of the Miracoli in Venice and Pittoni’s ‘St Jerome’
altar-piece,” Burlington Magazine 131 (1989), 684–92.
115 Alvise Zorzi, Venezia scomparsa, 2 vols (Milan, 1977).
116 Howard, Venice & the East, pp. 189–216.
117 Cited in Howard, Venice & the East, p. 99.